(no subject)

Every discussion about what you “should” do or read to be a good writer makes me wanna pull my hair out and start yelling about prescriptivism

Throw out the word "should", start talking about cause and effect. If you don't read the classics, then you might be unfamiliar with the tropes of the genre. If you are not familiar with your genre, then you might be repeating what someone else did before. If you study history, then you will have more real-world examples of human behaviour. If you don't think your worldbuilding through, then some fans will find it harder to suspend their disbelief.

Does that mean you should read the classics and familiarise yourself with the genre and study history and figure out who domesticated the horses your characters are riding? No! Not it doesn't! It's your decision to make! If you don't want to because you're lazy, that's fine. If you don't want to because you find the classics immeasurably boring and choose to familiarise yourself with the genre otherwise or not at all, that's fine. If you don't want to because you question the chain of cause and effect implied by the advice, well then it's a good fucking thing we told you the explicit reasoning behind the advice instead of an unjustified "should", innit?